Category: Technology

The Next Printing Revolution

Having access to a 3D printer at Hammond has definitely changed the way I think about design, production, and consumption (in a school environment at least).

I greatly look forward to the concept of printing to continue to extend from hand written manuscripts to the printing press to 3D printing to this type of molecular crystal printing…

But the most interesting application has to be the potential for 3D-printed pills and medications. The technique could be adapted into a consumer-friendly machine allowing patients to simply print their own medicines in the exact dosages they need.

via Scientists Produce Rounded Crystals That Could Lead To 3D-Printed Pills.

Posting to Social Spaces Instead of Blogs

I’ll admit, there are times when I think it would be much easier to share links, ideas, and posts via something like Google+ or Facebook or Twitter rather than my blog.

Then I take a deep breath and step back. I realize the instant amount of traffic that is offered by those services doesn’t equate to the feeling of having my own space on my own blog.

Just a late night feeling after a long day.

I Went Back to Android

I tried.

I bought an iPhone 5s in August and did everything I could to try and live in an Apple ecosystem full time (for science).

However, given the choice at the Verizon Store yesterday between an iPhone 6+ and a new Moto X, I took the Android path.

I don’t regret or second guess my decision one bit. I’m typing this now on my Moto X and I’m loving this phone so far. Its quite possibly the best mobile I’ve ever owned (given, it’s only been a day).

Why?

I’m in the Google cloud, I like to tinker, and I don’t like having the same phone as 90% of the people I see around me. Plus, I can run my life and business on this phone in ways that aren’t possible with iOS.

iPhone is great. It’s just not for me.

Home Screen on My iPhone 2014

I like to post these every so often (this one from 2010 is historic) for my own archive uses…

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By the way, someone asked me yesterday why I had Lastpass on the front page and what it did as an app. I don’t know any of my passwords as they are all generated by Lastpass. Between that and using 2 factor authentication for everything I can (the Google Authenticator app beside Lastpass on the top row), I feel pretty confident about my security online. Those are two of myost used apps as a result.

Additionally, I’m glad to see services like Mint (my personal accounting app) and Evernote integrate their apps with TouchID on the iPhone so that I have to supply my thumbprint to open them up (Bank of America is releasing their updated app with that integration as well).

Security is my app theme for the end of 2014, evidently.

Very valuable read if you’re interested in the…

Very valuable read if you’re interested in the future of the web… time to rethink “Big Internet”

“Big Twitter was great — for a while,” says Jacobs. “But now it’s over, and it’s time to move on.”

These trends, if they are actually trends, seem related. I sense that they both stem from a sense of exhaustion with what I’m calling Big Internet. By Big Internet, I mean the platform- and plantation-based internet, the one centered around giants like Google and Facebook and Twitter and Amazon and Apple.”

Nicholas Carr at http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5010

Dave Winer on how to stimulate the open web

We were talking about this way back in 2006 (and probably before, but that’s when I started taking notice as the social web started accelerating) and it’s good to see that guardians of the web like Dave Winer are still hard at work thinking and talking (and making apps) about this:

Create systems that are ambivalent about the open or closed web. If I create a tool that’s good at posting content to Facebook and Twitter, it should also post to RSS feeds, which exist outside the context of any corporation. Now other generous and innovative people can build systems that work differently from Facebook and Twitter, using these feeds as the basis, and the investors will have another pile of technology they can monetize.

via How to stimulate the open web.

Go read and use RSS.

Back to iPhone

I’ve been using a Nexus 4 then the Nexus 5 as my daily mobile device for the last two years as I wanted to learn Android.

I enjoyed the experience for the most part (especially Google Now and apps integration) but I’ve missed the reliability and stability of Apple hardware.

So, I’m back on an iPhone 5s (until the 6 or whatever it’s called next month) for hardware and Google etc for software for now.